California dining chain sued after closing all 7 restaurants, laying off 300 workers

A beloved upscale dining chain may have closed, but they still have a hefty tab to pay.Three months before abruptly pulling the plug on a 32-year-old Bay Area restaurant empire, the operators behind longtime French dining chain sold off millions in future tabs to a cash advance firm.Now their lenders are suing to claw back the loan.

Lender Samson MCA demands $1.876 million in unpaid balances alongside roughly $500,000 in legal fees, according to a suit against Left Bank’s parent company, Vine Hospitality, filed in the Eerie County Supreme Court, first reported by SFGate.Vine reportedly struck a high-stakes agreement on March 19 with the financing outfit in which Samson agreed to buy $2.345 million worth of the restaurants’ future receipts upfront.In return, Vine was required to fork over 8% of every tab rung up at its registers until they had paid back Samson in full.The arrangement essentially meant that the hospitality group was mortgaging tomorrow’s steak frites before the cows were slaughtered, taking a cut off the top no matter what.

While Vine initially kept to the agreement and reportedly paid back about $469,000, they stopped making payments while their restaurants were still operational.On June 22, Vine abruptly announced on social media that it was shuttering all of its seven Bay Area restaurants, which included two LB Steak houses, four Left Bank brasseries and Meso.The mass shutdown also wiped out 300 jobs.Workers were reportedly given little warning, telling employees of the impending closure just before it was publicly announced, and a day before their final service.

“We didn’t really get much detail,” a manager at the Menlo Park Left Bank Brasserie told the Mountain View Voice.“People weren’t really asking questions.

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